The Spy Who Came In With A Cold
by thebadwolf
Summary: A TwoPart Ninth Doctor And Rose Novella...


THE SPY WHO CAME IN WITH A COLD

A Short Story

By

Russ Flinn

© 2005 Russell Flinn

Rose Tyler sneezed, somewhat indelicately.

The Doctor, who was standing, arms crossed, admiring the view of nothing much in particular on the TARDIS monitor, turned his head, frowning.

"Oi, cover your mouth when you do that!"

Rose gave a smile dripping with sarcasm, and sniffled slightly, trying to resist the urge to wipe her nose on her sleeve – something she would never have done in front of her mother. But then her mother at least didn't wear the same leather jacket and jeans day in and day out. Perhaps Time Lords didn't sweat, or if they did it must smell faintly of pear drops, since that was as much body odour as she ever detected from her travelling companion. God, if he ever heard her thinking like that, _him_ the companion! She just hoped the TARDIS wasn't about to snitch on her to it's master.

"I think there's a draught coming from somewhere," she explained, zipping up her jacket to demonstrate her discomfort.

The Doctor looked around, as if he could see stray air currents, and shrugged.

"You'd have loved it in the old days. This place used to be full of hot air."

"I can believe it," she mumbled, shuffling up to his side as if he was capable of giving off the warmth that he sometimes seemed to lack. "Bit before my time, I guess."

"Yeah. And after it." He went back to staring at the grainy monochrome picture on the screen.

Of course, when he had said he was going to set up a monitor so that she could enjoy the view, she had expectations of one of those Star Trek screens, the kind that took up a whole wall and looked a bitch to dust. She should have known better. From out of the 'tool box' - which must be a sort of alien euphemism for the equivalent of the unused kitchen drawers that always contained fuses, takeaway menus and plastic bags that gasped for breath the moment you opened their pine-look, fitted prison – he tipped a cascade of junk. Among the fragments of circuit boards, radio speakers and pieces from old board games, there lay a battered looking portable TV set. Rose didn't recognise the make, and assumed that Grundig was some alien manufacturer whose race had no use for colour, form or style.

Too true, in fact, since the screen was the colour of the dust that swaddled it and had taken as long to warm up as an Inuit's central heating boiler. When it finally did, and the blank grey glass fired up to display what was, in essence, blank greyness, she had stifled a giggle. Especially since the Doctor seemed to find it truly compelling, and pointed out that some of the stray pixels of light were in fact local stars. She hadn't the heart to tell him that some appeared to be spots of emulsion from when the previous owner must have been decorating whatever miserable bed-sit the TV set mustn't have looked out of place in.

"It's not exactly going to pull in the ratings, is it, Doctor?"

"That's were you're wrong," he chided playfully, adjusting the contrast and trying to make it look as if the dial was meant to come off in your hands as part of the natural course of its duties. "You'd be amazed how many gifted people the Universe over watch scenes like this in the hope of something happening."

Rose stomped her feet and sniffled again.

"Yeah. I keep expecting David Duchovny to crop up. Can't we just go somewhere?"

The Time Lord faced her, utterly baffled.

"We _are_ somewhere!"

"No, I mean, _somewhere!_ Somewhere warmer. Somewhere sunny. Somewhere without a draught…"

"There are people from your distant future who would have dreamed of getting a good look at what we're looking at now, Rose. They don't do Club 18-30 this far out, but they do do…"

He paused.

"They do do what?" Rose asked.

"Hang on a mo…" He glared at the screen intently.

She sighed. "Do _what?_"

He put up a hand to hush her, never taking his eyes off the screen which remained steadfastly blank, grey and unimpressive.

"_Doctor!"_

He beamed, wrapping one long arm around her shoulders and pointing at the screen with the other.

"They do do _that!_"

Rose squinted, trying to make out the indistinct blob of slightly-less-than-grey which had drifted into view. "I'm trying really hard to be impressed here," she confessed.

The Doctor gave an exasperated gasp and delicately tried not to break the brightness control too.

"There, that's more like it," he grinned, stepping back to admire what Rose was convinced looked nothing more nor less than, well, than…

"A big arse in space?"

He looked at her, appalled.

"Belcaria Finiria Genta Prime! The only known instance of a siamese-planet!"

"A what? You're kidding…" 

"Nope, kidding is what pregnant goats do. Fantastic, isn't it?"

"So you brought me to look at a big bum masquerading as a planet..?"

"Well, the inhabitants call it a planet. Only because calling it a moon's a bit ironic…" He added slyly.

"God knows why anyone would want to live there!"

"Imagine how much worse it is for the neighbouring planets, seeing that in the sky every night." He switched off the TV and began to busy himself at the console. "No wonder they're so hostile…"

Rose shivered and looked up at the vast metal arcs above them.

"Great!"

* * *

"Just a routine visit," the blank mask said.

The voice was passed through so many filters, bacteriological, viral and nucleic, that what emerged was functional but flat. The young boy's eyes widened as he backed away to let the protecto-plated figure pass into the darkened apartment. "One of the neighbouring parties heard… coughing?"

"That was me," the boy said. "I drank my juice too quickly." Unfiltered, it was easy to hear the lie in his words, even without the hesitancy in his body language. He started as a second voice announced its presence

"No need to look so scared, son. We're here to help."

Outnumbered and no longer able to maintain the pretence, the boy began to cry as the strange figures began their search of the apartment. Only when one of them had found the note left on the kitchen table, a carton of supa-sterile lactose acting as a paperweight, did they once more notice the child in their midst.

"Where is the author of this note?" said the first intruder, while the second, feeling that his companion's cumbersome bulk looming over the infant was inappropriately menacing and unproductive, put a heavily-concealed hand on the boy's shoulder, reassuring him.

"He means your mother, son," he said softly. "Where is your mother?"

Unsteadily, and fighting back tears he knew might be used in evidence against him, the boy led them through to the bedroom.

When the foremost stranger saw what lay upon the bed he let only the child advance into the room, putting up a hand to signal to his colleague that further progress would be a breach of protocol. Responding to this note of caution, the hindmost intruder peered past his colleague, saw immediately the reason for his companion's reticence, and unclipped his multicom unit.

"On-site One to Firewall, we have a medical emergency in Apartment Two-Sixteen. Request immediate quarantine of the building and over-ride all electronic locks on remaining apartments. Inform locum of our situation."

The unit crackled into life. "Please state the nature of the emergency."

"Suicide," the bland voice replied "Attempted suicide in progress."

* * *

It said a great deal about the residents of Belcaria Finiria Genta Prime that when a tall blue Police Box meshed itself into their reality, displacing gusts of air and dust particles, they scarcely paid it heed.

It said even more, perhaps, about the nature of the underlit, run-down and surreptitiously busy quarter into which the TARDIS had grindingly introduced itself. Anywhere else on the planet, such disinterest might simply be put down to the fact that they were grateful that something other than their bifurcated homeworld was getting the attention for the time being, but in the district of New Ailing it was just a question of having seen it all before.

Hurriedly, Rose and the Doctor stepped through the narrow portal, scarcely acknowledging the tingling _frisson_ of dimensional shift, the young girl waiting while the Doctor locked the door behind them, and suspiciously eyeing the seedy environs to which the Time Lord had dragged her this time.

"I don't like it already," she grumbled, sniffling.

The Doctor took a handerchief from inside his jacket and handed her it, winking. She paused as she opened it up, all frills and fine stitching. "It's an heirloom," the Doctor told her, "Don't ask…"

For once, the Doctor forgave her for her initial disappointment at yet another alien civilisation. Primarily because it probably looked neither alien nor civilised to a girl from the 21st Century Earth Period.

As if reading his mind, Rose shuddered and glanced up at him smiling weakly back at her.

"It looks like a Saturday night in Soho."

He puffed out his cheeks. "I s'pose there's parallels, yeah. Fancy a walk?"

* * *

"You should understand that I don't usually make house-calls, Mrs, erm, Mrs Juda."

Doctor Voya Demica read the outpourings of the woman's dying heart dispassionately. For all she knew, he could have been examining it for grammatical inconsistencies, such was his air of clinical diagnosis.

Demica was a neat, formal man, brisk in his manner, efficient in his movement. In keeping with his profession, he was entirely hairless, his body stripped clean of any potential vehicle for infection or bacterial colony. He administered words as though they were drugs, to be taken aurally and without any need to be palatable.

At last, he said, "This won't do."

His patient looked on, the remark only compounding her drugged confusion, and he met her bleary gaze with one of benevolent condescension. She was teetering on the brink of self-destruction, her progress halted by Demica's injection of stemmers, holding her in the painful grip of death without hope of release or relief. From this state of limbo, she fought to follow his words.

"This just won't do," he emphasised, smiling almost apologetically, a manager

disappointed by the flippancy of an employee's hasty resignation.

"It isn't reason enough. Any of it. There are medications, empathy seminars, group therapists for this sort of thing. I see no insurmountable motive for your attempt at self-harm."

"What reason would you like," she barely hissed.

"A better one," he said briskly. "And trust me, there isn't one. Nothing is incurable, my dear."

"Except life."

Ignoring her reply, the physician leaned in towards her, raising a sterile gauze to his mouth as if he feared contamination from her melancholy. With a gloved hand he took one of hers, placing the pale, frail fingers to his chest.

"You feel that, my dear? The steady ticking of life itself, marking time, relentless, indefatigable. Isn't it wonderful? Given to us by the Proctor himself. Life is so very precious."

He was cooing now, placing her hand back besides her and stroking her damp hair with sincere compassion, for he was not thinking of her now, but of the greater good, his assignation to a higher purpose.

"And hasn't he granted us the knowledge of ourselves to better our lot, to prolong life and hold back death. What right have we to question his wisdom?"

Suddenly there was an air of menace in his whispered sermonising.

"Are you saying that anything you ever felt, any event in your life or any word you put down on this piece of paper has given you the authority to defy the blessing of life?"

She struggled to open her mouth, to gather breath in her failing lungs, but the passion of her words found a way.

"If we don't die, why worry about offending the Proctor? The Second Term must be a pretty deserted place thanks to his system."

Demica stared glassily into the dim light of her eyes. He was a man of the Here And Now, the devotees of pragmatism and This Life, sworn to uphold existence no matter what the cost to the individual. To hear her use words of such archaism as The Second Term, that futile belief-system posed by a long-dead government that had carelessly allowed it's voters to die in wanton acts of old-school mortality, was a blasphemy of logic that he fought hard to ignore. He sought only to prolong life, not to judge those who had resigned themselves to natural causes. In his quieter moments, he wished he could condemn such people to immortality.

The physician gripped her hand tightly, forcing her to feel, as if trying to justify the tears squeezing from her failing eyes.

"The system was put in place to ensure as long and healthy a life as pharmagenesis can provide. Which, I might add, and in spite of the efforts of such as yourself, has so far been without compromise in its success. We have placed Death itself in a bottle and entropy in stasis. One day, perhaps, even retreat."

Demica rose up from her bedside and carelessly wiped his gloved hands on his tunic which, the fabric being imbued with an aggressive disinfectant, hissed as her humanity of microbes and symbiotic bacteria was burned from existence.

"You will also be aware," he continued in his previous stentorian manner, "That your health is the property of the government. Keeping you alive in order that you provide a useful function within society costs a considerable amount of money, my dear. By living under those conditions, you have entered into a contract with your government. Life is not cheap. Hence, we have useful organisations such as my people at HealSec and, in matters such as this, I can assure you that your persistent course towards self-end lies in direct contravention of the Wellbeing Act. Recidivism such as yours has no place here, nor will I waste taxpayer's money on your repeated defiance of the law."

She lifted herself from her pillow with one furious effort "Then just let me die!"

"Too easy!" he snapped, betraying perhaps a more sincere emotion, that of frustrated anger. He turned to one of the angular-limbed protecto-suits that she presumed held his assistants.

"We're authorised to kill the child," he said flatly.

She flung herself out of the bed, hands reaching for him in vain as he deftly stepped from her grasp. "No, please, you can't - "

"A simple anaesthetic. Introduced directly into the aorta. Quite painless, I assure you."

"You wouldn't do that, you bastard!" Again she lunged, this time stinging her hand on the chemical repellents in his tunic. She let go with a yelp.

He leant closer, softening voice muffled further by the protective gauze.

"No. You're correct, my dear. I can't, and I wouldn't. But your private philosophy of death should have no problems with it. After all, you don't want the emptiness of the afterlife to yourself do you?"

He grasped her by the arm and lifted her to her feet. Unsteadily, he led her back to the bed.

"It is irresponsible enough of you not to have found a father figure for your child, one to replace your dead husband. The family unit is one to be upheld, cherished even. An orphan such as yourself should have an appreciation of this. Thankfully, there are fathers enough in our government, paternal in their judgement and responsible enough to ensure good grace and order among its public. But you see now, don't you, how you fear the death of those you care for? Perhaps you empathise with my plight then? Or that of the government?"

He helped her back onto the mattress, assembling the sheets around her as though he were a doting parent.

"We do what we do because we care."

He stood up, regarding her with pity.

"I shall do what I can to argue your case, but I rather think such an alien tongue as the language of self-destruction will find little audience in your favour. You'll be lucky to avoid protective prosecution. It may be The Sleep for you, my dear."

"But my son..? You can't - " 

"A theoretical orphan compared to the very real one you were content to make him. He will fall under the mercy of the Proctor. Thankfully, some conditions are not hereditary. I'm sure he has the spirit for survival that his mother lacks. Who knows, he may one day be standing in my place, looking at yet another who seeks to renege upon the contract of existence. He may even remember _you_."

The exaggerated shadow of one of his assistants filled the bedroom doorway, barely clearing the sides.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Doctor," the percolated voice began, "But we appear to have pulled a sickie. He's on the next floor. Got him during a routine check-up."

"Well," the Doctor sighed, shaking his head in weary dismay, "This is proving to be a very unsatisfactory visit."

* * *

"It's changed a bit," the Doctor admitted.

Rose hadn't felt that it was dangerous, more the kind of place where everyone was too wrapped up in their own dealings and motives to notice two wide-eyed strangers in their midst, but the Doctor had taken her hand as they made their way up the busy main street and she knew it was his shorthand for possible trouble as much as it was an act of companionship.

"There's some good bars round here, I think, if you fancy a ginger beer."

"I am old enough to drink, you know, you cheeky sod!"

"On Earth, maybe. Besides, some of the stuff round here can get pretty strong. Mate of mine triggered off his regenerative cycle after two shots of something called Liquor Mortis." His face flinched in pain, briefly, but enough for Rose to notice. She squeezed his hand.

"His regenerative what?"

"Don't worry," the Doctor responded swiftly, "Just don't want you showing me up."

She laughed. "Worst thing that happens to me is I get stupid and happy." Rose paused, before adding, cautiously, "Is that why you wanted to stop off for a quick one?"

"Me? Nah. I'm the designated driver, remember. I've had enough of seeing double for one day, Rose."

"Eh?"

"Siamese planet, remember?" He coaxed playfully.

"Oh, yeah, that. Sunsets must be wicked."

"Sunsets is right. If you miss the first one you can always catch the repeat. Brilliant place this." He frowned. "Well, it was. Seems a bit, I dunno, weird here compared to last time."

"Minging," Rose agreed.

"Yeah."

Rose hesitated sharply, letting his hand go, a worried look upon her face. "You can't still be here, can you? I mean, you said you've been here before."

"Who, me? Not likely. I told you it looks different. Course, I can't speak for what I haven't done _yet - _"

"Good, 'cause I thought that you couldn't do things like that. You know, like come back on yourself. Something to do with causing a big explosion."

"It's good manners, too. The only thing we can't ever do is occupy the same point in space and time as any other physical body, whoever or whatever it is – a hard concept for a woman to grasp, I imagine, having seen some of the parking on your planet…"

Rose let out a shocked laugh, playfully swiping at him.

"Cheeky sod, you are. At least women drivers don't find themselves in the middle of a war-zone everytime they stop off somewhere!"

"No, they just cause them," he responded breezily, walking with reckless abandon out into the middle of the road, arms outstretched and turned round to face her, walking backwards into the traffic and miraculously avoiding it all. "We're taking the night off tonight, Rose Tyler. Tonight there's going to be no murder, no mystery, no intrigue and no tab to pay." His face contorted into a joyous smile.

"Tonight we've come to meet friends and make some more…"

* * *

Reuben Neptune was having a bad day. The worst.

He could distinguish just how bad it was by comparing it to how very good it had been only a few hours before.

He had got in late from doing his rounds, or what others might see as the occasional discreet rendezvous with the rich and bored and cautious, during which there was a polite exchange of words and a much less polite exchange of money and packages. He had done well that night, too, more than filled his boots, and all he had wanted was to get back to his apartment, stow the cash and possibly even risk lighting up a celebratory lungblack. The recreational kind, of course. The kind that made you forget who you were, why you were and what were was.

If he had been staying at his 'office' – a rented room in the New Ailing district – he might even have partaken of a late-night cholesto-roll, savouring the sensation of all those free radicals, toxins and animal fats routing his body, performing their little terrorist acts along artery and vein, desparately trying to bring him down in a microcosmic revolution.

There was never any danger of them prevailing, of course, which is what made it such a short-term rush. No, all it took was the next day's course of pharmagens and he was back in black at the Bank Of Longevity.

But he wasn't out of town that night, so he simply headed back to his block, clutching the night's takings and already planning his next step to business success. He would need to stock up soon, that was for sure. His clientele always got what they paid for and, being wealthy in the main, that meant they got a lot. He was almost wiped out, and there was no way he could let that happen. Any break in the chain of supply and demand would be siezed upon by his competitors and he would be out of a job in no time flat.

He had learned that much in previous business ventures. Especially when he had tried to go big league and trade in arms and munitions. The real trick was to always keep them wanting more, which meant that unexpected outbreaks of peace were a constant bane.

But he had seen a way through that, spotted a market that no other gun-runner had thought worth their time, and he had made a killing. Which was more than could be said for those who purchased his products, but hey, that was a good thing. Sell to the wrong people and they wouldn't need you anymore – they would either disappear off the face of the map in a blaze of inferior merchandise, or eliminate their opponents and settle down to some well-earned peace. Chilled the blood, a thought like that.

No, he was best out of it now.

The only weapons he sold now were ones you used against yourself in a long, slow and inevitably futile suicide bid. He had seen an entrepreneurial opportunity on BFG Prime and had made a _real_ killing. Or not, he smirked.

After all, this was the planet of the Happy Hour for the health set, and he knew that there would soon be a market for a very specific kind of contraband. And yes, he prided himself on having mined their clot-free veins to the fullest.

Yes, he couldn't have been happier. Except that he thought he probably could, which is why he got home, lit up his leisure lungblack excitedly and then realised several seconds later that he had been so happy and so excited that he had forgotten to drape something over the apartment's smoke-detector.

"You appear to be smoking," it barked, "Please extinguish the health hazard immediately and desist."

Shaken, Neptune tried to bundle a shower-robe over the device, but it was agonisingly out of reach and by the time he had dragged a chair over and clambered up to face the shrieking, tell-tale mechanism, it had already informed him that he was in violation of the Wellbeing Act, should seek counselling and that it would inform the Health Visitors of HealSec to make an immediate house-call.

"Bollocks!" he yelled, nearly falling off the chair in his haste to make his escape.

"You appear to be using abusive and medically-objectionable obscenity in contravention of the Clean Air Clause," the Swear Box began.

* * *

"Actually, scratch Soho. It's more like Bracknell!"

The Doctor was trying hard to disguise his growing impatience with Rose's lack of enthusiasm. Okay, so she wasn't exactly feeling great, and they had hardly stopped since Henrick's – and her facsimile boyfriend, Mickey – had gone into liquidation, but it had been her choice to travel with him, to run the marathon of Time and Space together, so there was no point moaning that every destination wasn't filled with intrigue and adventure. She was from Earth of all places, so a little misery and late-night drinking should hardly be alien to her.

"Yeah, well, lots of planets have a Bracknell…" he replied tersely.

He hesitated in front of a series of increasingly gaudily-lit entrances, all throwing out a different BPM and species of drunken reveller.

Rose frowned, dabbing at her nose with what she had come to think of as the Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen of the handkerchief world.

"Another bar. How original! Filled with space pirates? Desperados and outlaws who would cut your throat and send you floating through space as soon as smile at you?"

He let go of her hand.

"Have you quite finished?"

She hesitated. Sometimes he seemed so much taller, shifting between his roles as surrogate-father, older brother, and the kind of surreptitious date you never told your mum about, to something else she wasn't anything near as comfortable with. At those times, when his eyes went cold and yet she could feel the heat of some strange anger coming off him, she remembered that he wasn't even remotely human.

"I just thought that for someone who was going to take me on a trip round the Universe, you might have been a little more inventive when it comes to night-life…" she argued, letting the words soften towards the end. She had to be practical after all. If she was going to get herself stranded one day because she spoke her mind, the least she could do was try to avoid it being on the planet 'Chav'.

After a while of walking in silence, she said, "So are we going for a drink or what?"

"Pick one then," was the testy response.

"How about here? Looks nice…"

The Doctor pulled her back from the blue ambience of the rowdy doorway. A bouncer with a face like a fist, and a voice like that of a fist at work, announced that it was two-for-one night.

"Erm, no thanks, actually," replied the Doctor, before announcing to his companion: "That's a monosexual bar…"

"Oh. You mean like same-sex?"

"No, _just_ sex. Well, sort of. For the single-minded and single-status only."

The door was flung open, exhaling exotic fumes and spitting a roughly simian lifeform past the disinterested bouncer and out onto the pavement. "You bunch of tossers!" he screamed back at the building, and skulked off, thrashing a boney tail angrily in his wake.

Rose and the Doctor shared a glance then burst out laughing.

"I think I get you now," Rose giggled, clutching her companion's arm and dragging him further down the street.

"You heard it," he grinned, "Straight from the monkey's mouth."

Rose gave him a coquettish wink.

"Might have been interesting though…"

He looked puzzled, shocked then startled, before settling on a friendly but emphatic, "No."

His companion took his hand and swung his arm playfully as they continued along the promenade of clubs and bars.

"Just winding you up. For someone who can go anywhere, anywhen, you don't get out much do you?"

"Once you'd stepped in there, Rose, neither would you. Here, this looks more like it!"

Rose looked it over. "Ye Olde Pubbe?"

"I know. I hate that Little Earth mentality too, but at least they speak English… Not that it matters, but it will give your brain a rest."

* * *

Doctor Demeca stepped warily into Reuben Neptune's apartment, passing a brief but unimpressed glance over the cluttered living-space, before finally letting his eyes rest upon the occupant.

Neptune was being flanked by two of the protect-suits, both with their calmers drawn and ready to knock him off his feet with one shot if he should attempt an escape. Neptune hated Health Visitors, not simply because they represented officialdom and the pursuit of orderliness and good living, but also because they were just plain creepy. Blank, impassive masks that gave metronomic whispers of decanted breath, imposing armour that exaggerated the size of the already sturdy men within. A sort of Health and Safety Samurai.

That was until he set eyes upon Demeca, for then he saw the virtue in a masked visage.

Neptune had heard of Voya Demeca before, but had never actually seen him. He would have liked it to have stayed that way. He looked, to Neptune, like a department store dummy - smooth, completely hairless, a fixed expression not unlike mild, unspecified interest, and eyes that might as well have been painted in, such was their blank scrutiny.

For his part, Demeca looked at Reuben Neptune and saw only trouble.

Demeca's sensitive nostrils flinched. He could detect each and every reason why Neptune was trouble too, purely by taking a breath. Lungblack smoke, caffeine blocks, nervous sweat.

"I think we may have found ourselves in the company of a 'sickie', Mr Neptune," he pronounced levelly. "What do you say to that?"

Neptune fought the urge to struggle, to flee, trying hard to look outraged and calm and anything but guilty.

"No idea what you're on about, mate."

Demeca's lips formed a smile.

"Really? You don't smell too good. You smell very _bad_, in fact."

With the kind of timing Neptune could well have done without, a third HV emerged from the apartment's bedroom, clutching a small plastic bag in his over-stated hand.

"Contraband, sir," the warrior of wellbeing announced. "Also, lungblacks, dreamsweets and anaesthohol. Recommend we prosecute a full search of the rooms and process the patient immediately."

"Proceed then," Demeca agreed, his eyes never leaving those of his latest patient, letting the HV read Neptune his rights to representation by his chosen physician.

After the summary warning, the HV in charge reached for the wrist-raints.

Neptune had not heard any of his rights, his mind racing through a series of options and their probable conclusions, settling for any that didn't end in The Sleep. They all did. He was outnumbered, out of time and out of luck. Only the solid click of a pair of wrist-raints being opened brought him out of his brief reverie.

"I have cancer," he said quickly.

Demeca's head tilted to one side.

The HV's froze, looking to each other, then to Demeca, before finally turning their ergonomic faces to their prisoner.

Demeca's voice was hesitant, lacking some of the cold flippancy it had shown before.

"Cancer?"

Neptune nodded.

"Where?" Demeca asked cautiously, seeing the effect this news had upon his assistants. Their thoughts were as clear to him as it was that Neptune was lying or buying himself some time, but still… cancer!

"In that bag you found," Reuben Neptune explained. "It's real too, proper malignant strain, not those dormant tumours they trade in New Ailing."

The HV's were shifting uneasily. Demeca did not like their body-language. He could imagine their eyes twinkling, dry lips being caressed by the tips of their tongues. He knew what they were thinking. How could he not! He was thinking the same.

"Are you seeking to bribe us, Mr Neptune?" he asked.

Neptune shrugged.

"Seems a shame to let it go to waste. I don't need to tell you what it's worth to certain individuals. Influential ones at that. Of course, I don't have access to them half the time, but a man in a position of authority must be able to reach quite high."

Neptune smiled.

"Almost as high as the price he can ask. Probably even open a few doors for a bloke with ambition."

The physician returned the smile.

"We will be taking the bag with us," Demeca instructed his attendants. "As 'evidence'. Nothing more."

"Let the guys in Complaints have it? They wouldn't know a legit medical condition if it . No, you'd need to be an archaeologist to recognise this strain, because it's the genuine article. Not been seen round these parts for a generation at least. And you know how long a generation is these days, thanks to your lot…"

"I'm sure it's clearly marked" 

"Course it is. Trouble is, it's in code. Sick-dic, the polari of the dealers. No use to you like that, is it?"

Demeca shifted, his thoughts nebulous, his face impassive.

"You know you want to," Neptune goaded, with an insolent grin.

"Very well," intoned the physician. "Show me." He gestured for the forensic HV to hand over the bag to their patient.

Carefully, Neptune reached into it, fumbling about. There was a tiny fracturing sound from within it, the sound of glass cracking between his fingers. Confused, the HV's looked at Demeca for instruction.

Regardless of his pallor, Demeca blanched.

"What is that you're doing?"

Using their hesitancy to his advantage, Neptune flung the contents of the bag at the medic.

Demeca was fast enough to avoid it hitting his face but the viral spores caught his tunic, which saw only one response to such an aggressive strain and, in reflex, burst into flame. Being a public health issue, Demeca's assistants knew their duty and let the healthy felon run by them as they doused their incensed and shrieking superior with retardant from the utility function of their heavy and cumbersome armour.

Caught in a dilemma of personal and professional responsibility, Demeca's wails turned to words.

"Don't just stand here, _help him!"_

* * *

The barman, a brusque-looking thug of a man, love-bitten with tattoos, was surprisingly fastidious as he cleaned the glass in his hands.

"Would you like an umbrella with it, love?"

Rose pulled a face.

"It's a pint?"

"Take one anyway," the Doctor suggested.

The barman handed her what she immediately recognised as a large golfing umbrella.

"This is some kind of joke, right?"

The Time Lord smiled broadly, taking his drink from the counter and an umbrella from the stand, "You'll thank me in the long run. Some of the live stage acts in here get a bit racey…"

Racey wasn't quite the word Rose had in mind when she had followed the Doctor into the musty dinginess of what was meant to be a traditional English public house. It had obviously just been someone's idea of what one might be like, having never been to one before, but having been rather too familiar with members-only strip clubs instead. The Doctor seemed completely unfazed by the squalor and seediness of the venue, busying himself with asking after an old friend he had hoped might have dropped in recently. Certainly he didn't seem to be deriving any titillation whatsoever from the semi-clad girls gyrating and grinding amid the threads of smoke and dry-ice vapour that threatened to entirely obscure the stage. Perhaps he only fancied trees after all, she mused. His idea of a wild night out was probably breaking into a garden centre.

"So come on then," Rose said, tugging at the Doctor's sleeve, "You going to tell me who this mate is we're looking for, or are you just going to leave me in suspense?"

The Time Lord looked at her in amusement.

"You're going to know him if I tell you, then?"

"I might feel less like slapping you if you do," she warned.

He held up his hands in mock surrender.

"Yeah, yeah, alright then. His name's Neptune. And not the one you're thinking, before you say anything. Reuben Neptune."

"Sounds like a drag act," Rose said slyly. She looked over at the stage full of undulating limbs and baby oil. "He on tonight, is he?"

The Doctor gave an ironic laugh at his companion's sarcasm.

"To be terribly frank, he's an arms dealer – the shooting, exploding kind, not…" He waved his arm as if it would have been an easy mistake to make. No doubt somewhere in this twisted Universe, it was.

"He sells weapons?" she screeched, horrified. Some of the patrons within earshot were horrified too, having never heard a woman before, let alone a shrieking one. The delegation from Bent Earth batted not an eyelid.

The Doctor was wrong-footed by this show of pacifistic outrage, blurting, "It's okay. He only ever sells weapons to peace-loving people. Nobody really gets hurt."

He got a steely stare of disbelief in return.

"I don't believe you sometimes. I thought that was the kind of person you get narky with, and here you are wanting to cosy up to a bloke who helps people kill other people. Or aliens, I don't know."

"I haven't come to buy that kind of thing, Rose, just to try and get hold of some supplies for the TARDIS and have a quick jar with him. That alright with you?" The irritation at having his better judgement in both his friends and his motives questioned was apparent in the despairing shake of his head as he tried to turn away.

Rose refused to let go, of his arm and of the subject.

"You'd feel different if he sold something to someone like the Slitheen, wouldn't you? I mean, what if something like that got into the hands of a child, for God's sake?"

He gave a puzzled, hurt expression.

"A neutronic device? A planetary-blast engine? The Cosmos Killer? Give me a break. This is the Doctor you're talking to, not Charlton Heston. Now take your hands off me - "

"I don't care how you justify it, Doctor. It's bloody irresponsible."

After a pause during which Rose's eyes held his, he blinked: "Well, they don't actually work…"

"What?"

"The weapons he shifts. None of them have any practical military value. They don't work at all. Last lot of blast engines he sold were filled with tyres…"

"That just makes it worse, Doctor!"

"They're pacifists. They're never going to know. And if they do declare a war on anyone, at least it will be a quiet one. Smokey, but quiet."

He tried to placate her with a silly grin.

Rose fought not to smile, grudgingly letting go of his arm and avoiding his gaze.

"Call it what you want, that's fraud where I come from."

"Look at it this way. Your thinking is that all arms-dealers are crooked, right?"

"Yes, of course!"

"So, logically, if he then sells on faulty goods, that's crooked too?"

"Yes…" she conceded warily.

"Well there you are. If something's bent and then bent again, it's straight as an arrow."

"No, it's not. It's broke."

"Yes!" he yelped delightedly. "Yes, he is. And that's precisely the reason we need to find him!" He took a long and, he thought, well-deserved swig of his drink. "I'm glad we got that sorted!"

She let it pass, if only because she was growing used to having to get past her initial reactions to some of the things the Doctor said or did. It scared her sometimes, the idea that she might be slowly changing into someone more like him, with his weird morals and attitudes. Moreso, because if she ever got back to Earth, her Earth, she was scared she would feel as out of place as he did, her mind too full of other lifeforms, other philosophies and other technologies to fit in anymore. Too often she felt like a child with a balloon, fearful that one slip of her hand might lose it forever, and with it might go her sense of herself and the people she had left behind.

* * *

After half an hour of trying to keep up with his flitting about the place, Rose sidled up to him, trying not to touch any part of the alien crowd that she didn't recognise as being a harmless limb, and prodded him in the back.

"Oi, I thought we were chilling out together?"

He looked at her, puzzled.

"We are, aren't we?"

She gave him her best glare, the one that was always guaranteed to get Mickey coming over all apologetic and romantic.

The Doctor, of course, wasn't Mickey.

"What you looking at me like that for? I won't be long, just asking after Reuben. Can't you go mingle or something?"

Rose scowled. "Mingle?"

"Yeah," he beamed, "Good idea that. Catch you in a bit."

And with that, he slipped from her sight.

"You alright, angel?" came a voice from behind her.

Rose turned to greet a welcome face. Welcome, in that it had one nose, two eyes, a mouth, and appeared, to all intents and purposes, to be another human being. A woman too, probably on the verge of middle-age – a fact that she was also blissfully unaware of, judging by the clothes, hair and make-up.

She put a hand on Rose's shoulder, maternally, and coaxed her out of the crowd to what passed for a quieter area of the pub.

"Let's get you away from that lot," she shouted over the on-stage music. "No place for a young lass. Got to have eyes in the back of your head with that mob, except they've already got them there. And elsewhere. Makes your skin crawl." She itched a flabby arm as if to prove it. "My name's Barb, by the way."

Rose couldn't help but smile.

"Here, wipe your nose, pet." Barb pulled a cluster of tissue from her copious cleavage. Rose half expected her to lick it first, but was grateful when she just thrust it into her hand. "You should give that up, you know," her new companion warned. "It's more than a little frowned on round here."

Rose hesitated, confused, then realised what she must mean.

"No!" she laughed. "It's not what you think. I've just got a - " 

Suddenly, the music changed tempo, the lights dimming and then rising with a bluish glow.

The woman glanced at the clock above the bar, obviously making more sense of the pattern of pixels than Rose.

"Bloody nora, is it that time already," she sighed. "Here, pet, sit over there in the corner where I can keep an eye on you," she cooed, pointing out a relatively abandoned section of chairs and tables. "You'll be alright there so long as you don't let any of these horny buggers by you a drink."

Sitting down with her drink and the incongruous umbrella, Rose looked up, grinning delightedly. "You're from Earth, aren't you?" she asked.

Barb gave a boisterous laugh.

"Sorry, pet. Never been there in my life."

"Oh." Rose tried to disguise her disappintment. "It's just that you sound like you're from - " She hesitated. Here she went again!

"Awww, it's fine, darl," the woman said, stroking Rose's hair from her eyes. "People are always mistaking me for a hom-sap. Tell you the truth, you all look alike to me."

The music began to rise in volume, signalling for quiet by simply drowning everything else out. The barman gave Barb a steely stare which she acknowledged with two fingers.

"Oh well, I better get on with it. Just you stay there and we can have a lovely chat after, if you want. Here," she said, handing her robe to Rose. "I'm on…"

Rose stowed the robe under her chair, trying not to look at the unexpected and practically invisible garments she had on underneath.

"Oooh, before I go," Barb whispered conspiratorially, adjusting a bra-strap. "I'd watch that bloke you were talking to just now. Older men," she scoffed. "Only ever after one thing…"

* * *

The Doctor tapped the last figure at the bar on the shoulder.

"Pardon me, mate, I don't suppose you've seen - "

A smooth, featureless, metallic face turned to face him.

"…Anything," the Time Lord added quickly. He checked his reflection and smiled. "Enjoy your, er, drink," and with that he hurriedly made hisexit.

He was struggling to quell his mounting sense of frustration. After all, he was on time, just like they had both agreed some seven years ago. Admittedly, his friend might have trouble spotting him in a crowd, what with the regeneration and everything, but the Doctor doubted the other had changed that much in such a short space of time. Unless the Madrinini had finally caught up with him after the wellington boot incident, and even then the most they would have done is express their disappointment in the most polite and reasonable terms they could muster. Really nice people the Mad's, even if you had indirectly caused the deaths of thousands of their people by selling them duff merchandise. They weren't suited to war anyway. Doomed to lose by virtue of impeccable manners, always letting the other person take the first shot and refusing to scan for signs of energy weapons because it was too much like prying. The Doctor felt sorry that nice people always seemed to suffer.

He knew all about that.

* * *

Rose was gobsmacked.

To a barrage of assorted leers and cheers, Barb had strode purposefully into the single spotlight and began to writhe exotically, her body undulating and rotating in the misty blue beam in ways that Rose found progressively less likely for the older woman's apparent age.

"Mind if I sit down, darling?"

Rose looked up to see a scrawny, agitated man in his mid-thirties. Or that's what it looked like to Rose. He could be twelve years old or a thousand years old these days. Truth be told, she was just glad he had everything where a human being normally has it, and at least he had an approximation of good manners.

Rose did her best to look unimpressed, largely because she was, and shrugged.

The stranger sat down beside her, resting his drink, so deadly they obviously daren't sell it in anything bigger than a thimble, on the table between them.

Without warning, and to the delight of the onlookers, she began to slowly slough her skin.

Rose made a retching sound, that became a cough. The man sat beside her seemed more interested in her hacking than the grisly stage show. As the performer rolled the last of her old skin down her leg seductively, pouting to nobody in particular, there were screams of encouragement from the restless mob. The whole room became a babble of race-specific badinage, general disorder and oaths that detailed exactly what they would like to do with her if they had the time or the appendages to do so. All except, that is, the little hamster-like creature sat near the stage. He just looked terrified.

"She's like a snake or something..?" Rose said aghast to her uninvited drinking buddy.

He chuckled, handing her a tissue from his pocket.

"Do you know how much of the atmosphere is made up from dead skin, darling? Twenty percent carbon dioxide, forty percent oxygen, ten percent carbon monoxide, five percent trace elements and twenty-five percent meat by-products… You might want to think about that next time you order a veggie-burger!"

The rowdiness grew to fever-pitch as yet another layer of skin was teased away longingly – anyone fortunate enough to be sitting in the front row of seats was invited to pull off whole strips with their teeth, which ruled out several of them. They just sat there wishing they had teeth. Or mouths.

The noise drowned out the music just as the final shred of her outer layer, not to mention her decency, was thrown off into the whooping mass. Pheromonal spurts of some watery liquid jetted up and hit the ceiling. Rose put up her umbrella, graciously allowing her guest coverage from the enthusiastic spray.

The act ended with customary brevity for these sorts of things, the room plunged into darkness as the protracted musical accompaniment reached a crescendo. As did the crowd, for whom the word restive was an understatement. Multi-lingual translator units struggled to find dictionary terms for some of the opinions and intentions being aired in no uncertain terms, one unit just giving up on trying to be polite about it all and declaring in Earth English that its owner would be pleased to 'pump her effing brains out' – although by the look of the fierce, tenticular creature concerned, Rose wondered if it was being rather too literal. It wanted head alright, it was just what it would do with it once it had it that made her uneasy.

"Well," said Rose huffily, shaking the umbrella dry and handing it to the stranger. "I hope _you_ enjoyed it!"

He held out a nervous hand.

"Was better for having your company, sweetheart. The name's Reuben."

Rose did a double-take.

"Reuben? You're not Reuben Neptune, are you?"

He shook his head quickly, taking back his ignored hand.

"No, darling, sorry," Neptune lied. "Why do you ask?"

She sniffled in disappointment. "A friend of mine's looking for him. Was hoping I'd beat him to it."

His eyes narrowed. She guessed he was straining to hear her above the renewed dance-beats bouncing off the walls around them.

"Does your friend have a name?"

Rose looked crestfallen, sipped a little of her drink. It tasted of peanuts.

"Yeah, I'm sure he does. I just know him as the Doctor."

Neptune froze. "Could this man's name be Voya? Voya Demeca?"

"You tell me, mate."

"Okay," he replied, thinking frantically. "Why is he so keen to find me then?"

"You've got something he wants, he said. Must be important because he's been bugging me all night with his chasing about after you."

"I see." In fact, what he did see was the tissue he had given to the girl to blow her nose with. She followed his eyes to it. It lay in the ashtray into which she had dropped it, stained bright red.

"God, I've got a nose-bleed." She pinched at the bridge of her nose. "Must have blown too hard."

"No," Neptune quickly reassured her, handing her another tissue. "It's not that. The tissue is suffused with analytical reagents. It responds to a variety of infections and diagnoses their type. Designer, chimera, wildcard," he watched her blow her nose, fascinated, "Authentic."

Rose giggled into the tissue. "I can promise you this cold is very real."

"You don't have to tell me that. That's what the red means. You're a very lucky girl, you know that, sweetheart?" There was genuine admiration and awe in his face. "You've got to be a globe-trotter. Nobody on this whole planet could have got through without a clean bill of health. How'd you get here then? Smuggled in? You some kind of illegal immigrant?"

"I don't feel like a very lucky girl right now," Rose snivelled, uncomfortable at his fascinated attention.

"I'm a bit of a fan when it comes to illness. Take a professional interest in it, you might say. Another drink?"

Something about him told her to decline. "So you're another doctor or something then?"

"Me," he said, chuckling at the idea. "I'm not one of those bloody killjoys, babe. I'm what they call a 'sickie'." He saw she wasn't following him. Not yet, anyway.

"I trade in illness," he went on. "It's very lucrative. That's why I dropped in tonight," he gazed around the bar warily. "Among other reasons."

He brought a small pouch out from under his jacket.

"A pill for every ill, love. Fresh stock just in. Have a gander at some of these babies…"

Once unfastened, the pouch practically exploded with vials, pill-strips and ampules. "Got them all here, darling. 'Flu, measles, acid indigestion, malaria. All synths, of course. You can't get the gen stuff for love or money these days, and believe me, I've tried both."

"You sell that? I mean, people here pay to be ill?"

"Not here, no." He bundled the pouch back out of sight hurriedly. "In the city they do. Have you any idea how much something like cancer fetches on the open market?"

Rose's lips curled in disgust.

"That's sick!"

He bellowed.

"I wish – I'd be worth a bloody fortune, darling!" His face brightened. "Hey, you fancy some music? There's a puke-box in the corner here. You ever heard 'Cancer Baby'? It's a remixed cover of some old Christmas track from Old Earth. Wicked track!"

Rose shook her head vigorously, swigging the last of her drink and making it clear she was ready to leave him and find the Doctor. If she could find him now. The bar seemed to have become even more crowded since she had last noticed. There was no sign of her friend.

All the while, this nutter was rabbiting on, trying to justify himself.

"The thing about BFG Prime is that nobody gets sick unless they really want to, and even then they have to do it on the quiet. They pay people like me to get them sick. It's just a short-term buzz, just long enough to remind them what mortality felt like. Longevity sucks. I mean, imagine never being ill. Never having an excuse to avoid some bloody family anniversary or to skip a day's work. Makes you shudder, I bet..?"

Rose was having none of it.

"I'm sorry, but it sounds to me like you're just living off people's misery."

Neptune looked genuinely affronted by the suggestion.

"I sell cancer, not insurance! And let's face it, it works out great for everyone…"

"I fail to see how it could…"

"Okay, well, what do poor people not have?"

"Money, obviously."

"And because of that, no decent healthcare and a bad diet. Because of that, they get depressed, take to booze and fags and Bob's your uncle – they get ill, I buy the illnesses and they can afford to pay for prescriptions and fresh fruit and veg. They don't though. They buy more fags and booze, so everybody's happy…"

"That's the most cynical thing I have ever heard," Rose said with ill-disguised horror. "And my ex used to work for local government!"

"I'm merely a facilitator, love, catering for the to's and fro's of market forces. What I'm looking into is expansion. Hoping to branch out into mental illness…"

"I'd say you've got a head-start."

Ignoring her retort, he reached over and took her hand. She wanted to snatch it back, slap him, scream or maybe all three, but somehow she couldn't do anything but let him stand up, lifting her to her feet.

"Where…?" Rose began, her voice seeming to lose interest in the words she was trying to utter.

"You see, what a new business venture needs is fresh capital and lots of it," Neptune said, checking that everyone in the bar was too busy to notice two people leaving together. "And since you're a genuine mishealth case, you can't have been seen arriving. Which," he said, walking her to the doors as swiftly as discretion permitted, "Means you're not going to be noticed leaving."

"Doctor," Rose managed.

"A doctor's the last thing you need, blue-eyes. You're about to make me a fortune on the closed market. Here," he took the tissue from her hand, careful not to let it's suggestive vapours anywhere hear his nostrils, "You won't be needing that where we're going."

Neptune could hardly believe his luck. Not only could she not have been an agent of Demeca's HV section, but if she really had got through quarantine with some serious old-school cold virus, who knew what other bacteria might be lurking in her.

Pity there was only one real way to find out, he thought. She wasn't bad looking for an alien.


End file.
